Brick Joke: The zombie with the gun who steals Peter's other gun at the end.

Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore : The characters begin the film believing that a mall is the perfect hiding place, but later discover they cannot stay there forever because eventually they're going to run out of food, and the zombies will get in sooner or later.

Comic-Book Time: The film apparently takes place a few weeks after the events of Night, released a decade earlier. This pretty much holds true for all the rest of Romero's Dead films.

Cosy Catastrophe: For a while, at least. The montage of the group enjoying their time in the shopping mall comes to mind.

A House Divided: Part of the reason why Humans Are the Real Monsters. It's strongly shown that the zombies are practically harmless, if you know what you're doing, but so many people are squabbling over what to do that they just get to multiply beyond control.

Humans Are the Real Monsters: Most famously, the zombies are an outright satire of mindless consumer culture and "mall drones." Throughout the film, the zombies are handled almost effortlessly; the only danger to humans come when the living humans get stupid or careless — it's just that humans are more concerned with arguing with each other, engaging in mindless behavior (such as the bikers raiding the mall for things like gold rings and money), and otherwise ignoring the problem.

Improbable Aiming Skills: Averted; Stephen misses a lone slow zombie multiple times before Roger steps in to put it down.

It's the Only Way to Be Sure: Dr. Rausch suggests the use of nukes against the zombies, perhaps forgetting that all the living humans killed by radiation or severe burns will eventually get back up. Fortunately, no one takes this suggestion seriously.

Jerk Ass: Wooley, one of the men in Roger's SWAT unit. A gigantic racist, to boot: he's eager to kill Blacks, Jews, and Puerto Ricans (though not in those terms) before the raid on the tenement begins, and slaughters tenants indiscriminately in said raid. Peter, a black man, pumps him full of lead.

A special mention goes to the WGON station manager who's willing to run a scroll of (by now) inoperative rescue stations because, as he puts it, "every minute that those stations aren't on, people won't watch us. They'll tune us out."

Jerk Ass Has A Point: Just like the other two movies in the Dead trilogy the human antagonist's goals are not too far removed from those of the heroes, and in fact may well be a whole lot smarter. While the Bikers plunder is pretty damn irritating for the heroes, its little different from the protagonists' own earlier ramsacking of the mall (plus they only begin hunting Peter and Steven after the latter idiotically starts shooting at them) and after they are done they get the hell out and move on, which takes the heroes months to bring themselves to do.

Kill 'em All: The scripted ending ended with everyone dying, but by the time it came to film it Romero had grown to like the characters and decided it would just be pointlessly depressing.

It also would have been WAY too similar to the end of the previous film, 1968's Night of the Living Dead.

The Load: Stephen and Francine. Originally all he has going for him is his skills as a helicopter pilot, despite his efforts. Francine starts with nothing. However, as Roger's health fails Stephen is forced to become more proactive and even early on manages to discover the vent system they use to move safely at several points. Francine does very little, though she does learn basic shooting and how to fly the copter.

The Mall: Chief setting of the film, used to skewer American consumerism by comparing it to the zombie hordes who "consume" everything in sight.

Melee a trois: The film has a climatic 3-way battle with Peter and Stephen vs. the bikers invading the mall vs. The Zombies.

Neutral Female: The actress playing Francine famously refused to be just another Screaming Woman. However, during the first confrontation at the airport she just stands there while her boyfriend is fighting with a zombie, neither running nor helping. She does get better though.

Pie in the Face: The scene where the bikers pelt the zombies with pies and seltzer water.

Precision F-Strike: Peter and Stephen are on the roof watching the bikers come down from the hill and into the parking lot. Stephen lets out a long, slow "Holy Shit!"

Re Cut: Clocked in at 139 minutes for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival; this was subsequently trimmed by Romero to 126 minutes for general U.S. release, and there was a 119-minute cut supervised by Dario Argento for the film's European release (as Zombi). In 2004, Anchor Bay released an "Ultimate" DVD box set containing all three cuts.

Room Full of Zombies: The film has a SWAT team raid a housing complex that has their basement filled with zombies.

Straw Man News Media: In the opening scenes, we see that Francine's bosses at WGON clearly don't give a shit about anything other than continuing to draw as many remaining viewers as they can, by any means necessary. Such as, for instance, deliberately listing rescue stations that are no longer operational.

Thematic Series: This film is a loose-knit sequel to Night of the Living Dead as are the sequels that follow.

The most egregious example being the Mexican bandito biker taking his blood pressure while his friends are getting shot at, eaten, or otherwise leaving the mall and zombies are visibly surrounding him. Also serves as a great Brick Joke.

Noticeably, Roger's attitude and reckless actions while barricading the mall bring him about to like three bites, which unsurprisingly ends with him turning into a zombie.

Stephen could give Roger a run for his money in reckless behavior: He shoots at a zombie with a rifle and misses, nearly hitting Peter. He takes the only handgun and runs off to find Peter and Roger in the mall, leaving Fran defenseless when a zombie wanders up. He shoots at the bike gang after Peter warns him not to and, upon retreating, drops his rifle down the elevator shaft. Finally, when he's bitten and dying, he wastes the last few bullets in his handgun warding off his last few attackers and leaves his brain intact so that when he dies, his zombie self still remembers the hidden nest where Peter and Fran are, and brings an army of flesh-eaters right behind him.

Really, this is the only reason why zombies are a danger in this movie. It's shown repeatedly that if you keep your head on straight, you can easily handle zombies — there are multiple scenes of characters running straight through crowds of the undead or fighting their way free of groups. With their bare hands, no less. Because people are more concerned with acting like idiots (for example, the people who refuse to heed government warnings about how all dead bodies need to be instantly cremated/decapitated/decerebrated, thus leading to things like the infested tenement building at the start of the movie, the bikers casually smashing their way in and leaving a huge opening for zombies to pour through — and even then most of the bikers escape alive, if they haven't been shot), the zombies are able to get the drop on them and, from a large-scale perspective, are able to multiply to threatening levels in the first place.

Undead Child: Two (running) zombie kids who attack Peter at the airport.

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